“But yet, we can move each other,” I said, thinking of how she’d tried pushing me out of the van.
“I was a prisoner in my own bedroom until this morning, when Mom finally opened the door to get Bastion.”
“Who’s Bastion?”
“None of your fucking business. God, just leave me alone.”
“I’m just trying to—”
“Enough.” She turned on me. “We’re not friends. We’re not going to have some tender ghostly girl power moment here in the fucking road. I’m dead and it’s your fault. I can forgive Tara for being a bitch, but I won’t forgive you for killing me.”
I had to grab my lone heel to keep up with her. The persistent footwear tugged against my hand, eager to return to my foot.
“So,” I said. “Where are you going now?”
She sighed. “Back to my funeral. I’ve got a huge turnout. The whole damn town practically. I was watching from the trees when the goddamn Ouija board summoned me.”
For a moment, I wondered why she watched from the trees instead of graveside at the service. “I wonder if I already missed my service.”
“It’s later today at Lamb Funeral Home. My parents were talking about going over to scream at your mother.”
“Oh.” I struggled for words. “I wonder why I ended up going up toward the Light, and you stayed down here?”
“Beats me. Maybe because I actually had something to live for.”
Ouch.
I stopped walking. She didn’t bother looking back. I stared again up at the Light, surprised but relieved that I wasn’t floating back up to it. Birds chirped in the trees. A bee buzzed past. I decided to go check out my funeral service.
Shannon stuck to the shadows of the trees lining Dorothy Pike. Dumb kid. She could’ve saved a ton of time by cutting through the field beyond the trees. Her path was taking her way out of the way. I almost called out to her, but figured she could go screw herself.
When I stepped out of the shadows and onto the street, I saw myself for the first time in raw sunlight. My astral body was as translucent as a jellyfish, with streaks of red and blue blushing beneath my insubstantial skin. The light revealed traces of my bones. A vague aura of white light glimmered around my whole body. When I held my hand up, the light stuck between my fingers like a bird’s webbed feet. I noticed wisps of smoke rising from my fingertips a split second before pain bubbled under my skin.
That’s when I realized why Shannon watched her funeral from the trees—to stay out of the sun.
The hurt started as a dull simmer but escalated to full-on agony. My legs gave out. I fell to my knees and screamed. The asphalt beneath me seemed to chew on my seared flesh. The sun was burning me alive, um, dead. Even my skirt and top were burning, and pale smoke drifted from every crevice of my tortured body.
I reached for the shadows, ready to drag my seared flesh across the gritty road. My blood boiled. The sound of me screaming and sizzling masked the noise of the oncoming van until it was too late. I turned my head in time to see through a blur of simmering tears the blue van’s grill rushing toward me.
The impact knocked me backward. Tires rolled over my legs. The undercarriage throttled my hips and arms. It happened so fast, and then I was lying in the road.
A mangled wreck.
I tried lifting my arms but the fractured stems only twitched in response. My legs were cracked husks. Smoke rose from my body. My hair smoldered. The sun set me ablaze. I lay in the road. Helpless.
3
Sharp blades of white-hot light slashed through my phantom form. The sunshine burned like acid and sizzled upon my skin. Through my skin. My blood boiled over, splitting my astral flesh. My bones cracked and smoldered. My eyes popped and sizzled like eggs in a hot pan, leaving me blind. I tried to scream, but could only choke out a raspy hiss.
So this was how the afterlife ended. In agony.
Pressure ruptured unexpectedly under my armpits. Someone lifted and dragged me. My lower half scraped across the road. Coolness settled over me, but my tortured body wasn’t yet able to experience relief. My mangled hands clutched my face, massaging my busted eyes.
A moment later, I blinked away tears.
I could see again. Steam wafted from me, rising upward in spiraling tendrils. Mind-crunching hurt swarmed inside my cooked ghost flesh. Shannon stood over me, shaking her head. Wisps of smoke rose from her shoulders. She’d dragged me into the shade.
“That sucked,” I said around a swollen tongue.
“Ghost Life Tip Number Two: You have to stay out of direct sunlight, moron.”
I chose to ignore the insult. “Why?”
She rolled her eyes. “Um, because it burns?”
“But why?”
“How the hell should I know?”
I examined my charred flesh. “God, I look like Freddy Krueger.”
“Don’t worry about it. Your burns will heal quick enough.”
“You saved me. Thank you.”
She shrugged. “Whatevs. Just be glad a cloud passed over the sun or I would’ve let your dumb ass fry in the road.”
Without another word, she stalked off.
I tried to sit up, but my fractured limbs wouldn’t obey. Unimaginable hurt festered in my body. In life, I’d never experienced pain like this. Not physical pain, anyway. Directly above me, the blobby mob of souls clustered around the Light. A cloud drifted past, and the sun shone brilliantly again. I flinched and whimpered, but thankfully, Shannon had dragged me well into the tree shadows.
Just as Shannon had said, my phantom flesh stitched itself back together. Bones crackled and crunched. My crumpled mass gradually inflated like a balloon. The healing took an eternity. All the while, the sun slowly slid across the sky. The shade draped over me receded.
Bit by tenuous bit, the hateful light inched toward me, a plodding race of relentless sunshine versus ghostly restoration.
Soon, the light was only a yard away.
Two feet.
One foot.
My arms and legs were mostly restored, but now I had a new problem. Hundreds of grass blades skewered my body all at once—a bed of thin green nails. I bit back a whimper and braced myself. Ectoplasmic tears slid down my face.
Six inches.
The sun crept closer to my left hand, and I could see that the band of pressed flesh once left by my wedding ring had finally disappeared. It’d been years, and I didn’t think it’d ever leave. Maybe that was just part of being dead, though. I made a mental note to see if I still had my tattoos, assuming I survived what happened next.
Gritting my teeth, I tore my left arm free of the grass. A mist of ectoplasmic blood rained through the air.
I screamed. Oh, how I screamed.
The sun kept on coming, that relentless orb pursuing me like a hungry dog. I braced myself and sat up. Hundreds of tiny blades unsheathed themselves from my back. I couldn’t do this in increments any more. No, I had to push through. Hard and fast. This couldn’t be a marathon. It had to be a sprint. That sucked because I was a long distance runner, not a sprinter. I was all about the long haul, not the quick pay-off. My hands tightened into fists. I took three deep breaths before remembering that I wasn’t really breathing.
With a savage grunt, I yanked my ass and legs free of the grass and threw myself across the ground. You could’ve called it crawling, but it was more like flailing. Like dying. The grass sliced into my shins, knees, hands, and feet. I pressed onward through the hurt. Just short of the treeline, where the grass mercifully receded, I lost my resolve. The pain proved too much.
I crashed face-first.
The green blades stabbed into my face. They pierced my breasts and belly. Jabbed into my eyes and—yes—even my sacred lady parts. I could go no further. I was pinned.
For a long while, I succumbed to the agony. It was easier if I didn’t resist. The grass knives stung like fire, but if I lay very still, I could endure it. The wounds on top of my body healed and the ones on the bottom s
immered. I sobbed as best as I could without moving my impaled face.
I was content to stay like this indefinitely until the heat crackled in my toes. The sun’s wicked sharp teeth chewed on my feet. My kitten heel cowered away only to return and suffer with me. I screamed into my faceful of grass skewers, and this time I had no one to help me.
4
The cruel sun made a long meal of my feet. Its dreadful light soon chewed on my ankles and bit into my calves. All the while, my lone shoe wiggled and convulsed. I tried to rise but couldn’t summon the will to pull myself loose while also enduring the sun’s burning fire. Below me, a line of ants marched through the grass. A cigarette butt rested upon the ground, its filter stained yellow.
These, I knew, would be the last sights I’d see. Anguish boiled in my calves. Soon, the sun would devour my knees. How long until my ghostly body could take no more? How long until my afterlife became my afterdeath?
A shadow draped over me like a cool sheet on a warm night. The muted light still hurt, but I could tolerate it. Something had eclipsed the sun, but I didn’t know for how long. Now was my chance. Without the unbearable pain crackling in my legs, I had the strength to rise. Like yanking a Band-Aid, I tore myself free of my minuscule skewers. A mist of ectoplasm rained from my face and torso. Stinging hurt riddled my tortured body. I dived and rolled for the trees.
For a long while, I cowered in the dirt beneath the forested canopy. Grey clouds covered the sun. Through the murk, the Light’s beacon still hovered directly above me surrounded by its jostling mob of souls.
Everything hurt, but the pain faded surprisingly quickly. I watched my feet as the smoldering flesh transformed from something resembling a pale microwaved steak to my regular ghostly form. I bowed my head and flexed my fingers. Tremors wracked my lack-of-body. Soon, I wiped my face and scrabbled to my feet.
Although the clouds provided security from the sun, I stayed beneath the trees for as long as I could, then took the country roads into town.
I shook my head at all the trash strewn along the road. Beer cans. Broken glass. Crumpled papers. Cigarette butts. Even an arm from a baby doll. Of course, I’d seen such sights often on my runs around town, but now the disrespectful waste seemed all the more personal. I was just another piece of discarded litter.
My soul was garbage.
Soon, I passed a remote farmhouse that belonged to the Heck family, white trash with a bad reputation. I used to date Ben Heck back in high school, when I was a freshman and he was a senior. He’d taken my virginity in the parking lot of the Dairy Hut. We used to take his boat out on a nearby lake for fishing and sneaking beers. He taught me how to tie knots for the boat and how to fish. I didn’t care for fishing so I’d spend most of our time while he was tending his line watching birds, talking about school drama, or stroking his cock. He rarely reciprocated the touchy—and when he did it was with rough finger-fucking that missed the mark—but he did teach me how to tie a lot of knots. I used to watch him work a rope and dream about all the things those deft fingers should be doing for me, but I’d been too shy and inexperienced to tell him how to pleasure me.
Now, he crossed the backyard wearing blue jeans and a stained t-shirt. He’d put on a little bit of weight but still had muscular arms. I paused to watch from the shade of the trees lining the back yard. The sun came back out, shining down between the clouds. Ben dragged a garden hose toward an upside down boat covered with a tarp in the middle of the yard. I wondered if it was the same damn boat. He tore off the tarp and flipped over the boat, revealing a ghost hidden underneath.
The ghost’s aura glowed a dull grey—like the color of dirty water used to wash watercolor brushes. Even from the tree line, I could see the resemblance between the two—the same square jaw and caveman nose. That’s when I realized that the spirit was his dead father, Jonathan Heck. I vaguely recalled hearing about his dad passing away a couple years back. By all accounts, Jonathan had been a mean drunk. I remembered Ben having bruises and cigarette burns on his arms, but he would never discuss them. I’d learned to stop asking.
His father’s ghost let out a mournful wail as the full weight of the sun tore through him. He must’ve climbed into that boat during the night—days ago, weeks ago, maybe more—and had been trapped ever since. Now, his own son sprayed a jet of water over the empty space, not realizing the suffering he was inflicting on his father’s soul. The sun set Jonathan ablaze and the spray from the hose cleaved him apart.
Why? Why would the sun do this to us? My stomach curled. I took a step toward him but the sun-lit yard stretched too far. I’d cook before I got halfway to him.
Instead, I watched with one trembling hand covering my mouth. Smoke rose in grey tendrils from the ghost’s ravaged form. Droplets of water sparkled in the sunshine. The flesh slid from his hands and face, revealing a charred skeleton that soon crumbled into something that resembled blue cheese. Ben hosed those remains away, and the fragments of his father’s soul scattered across the damp yard. It seemed to take an eternity for the chunks of writhing ghost flesh to turn from memory to so much smoke. I remembered all of Ben’s bruises and tried to tell myself that Jonathan Heck got what he deserved. But it was hard to imagine anyone deserving such suffering.
When it was done, Ben flipped the boat over to dry, lit a cigarette, and dragged the hose back toward the house. Jonathan’s ghost was destroyed—just a few wisps of smoke lingering in the air. I wrinkled my nose.
I hated smoke. It reminded me of the end of my marriage with Jeremy.
The clouds had once again obscured the sun by the time I reached the Lamb Funeral Home on the outskirts of town. Everything worth visiting resided on Davis’s edge, away from its rotten core. The beautiful old Victorian had brown shutters and cobalt blue shingles. The home radiated energy from simpler times and old-world comfort, aside from the newer accessibility ramp installed on the porch. I expected to see a few dozen cars lining the street near the funeral home, but found nothing of the sort. Hell, my mother’s car wasn’t even here, though I did notice Aunt Connie’s station wagon parked out front. Maybe I was early. Or late.
The sky seemed on the verge of rain when I entered the funeral home. Thankfully, its doors stood wide open. Soothing classical music played softly in the foyer. A box of tissues sat on a polished end table. A grandfather clock went tick, tick, tick—relentless in its message. It’s only a matter of time.
I found Mom and my corpse in the viewing room. The parental unit was slumped in a comfortable looking chair talking to my Aunt Connie. They both had wet, red eyes that reminded me of raw steak. My body lay in a casket that I couldn’t imagine we could afford. A few relatives that I hadn’t seen in years chatted on the edges of the room. Mom looked tired. I looked artificial.
My face seemed slightly bloated. My dead lips held a hint of neither a smile nor frown. White silky fabric lined the casket’s interior. I was wearing an awful dress—this horrid white lacy thing with uncomfortable ruffles around the neckline and blue horizontal stripes that made me look like a giant ribbed condom. Oh fuck me raw. Seriously? Mom wanted me to spend eternity rotting in this godawful mess of fabric? I’d worn this monstrosity as a bridesmaid at my friend Gail’s wedding. Speaking of, where the hell was she? And why the hell wasn’t Jeremy here? As much time as that asshole had spent trying to get me back, you’d think he’d at least put in an appearance.
Speak of the devil, I heard my Aunt mention Jeremy’s name. I walked over to eavesdrop.
“And that bastard isn’t even here,” she said. I figured she’d had a fair bit to drink, because she gestured wildly and smacked me in the face. Her open hand cracked me across the cheek. I toppled backward onto the floor.
“The little turd hasn’t posted a thing online since she died,” Connie said. She’d know, too. She still followed him on social media and made a habit of reporting his assholery to me despite my continued protests that I didn’t give a damn what he was doing. “Not even the usual dumbass theories abou
t government cover ups, corporate mind-control, or jackbooted stormtroopers.”
I crawled away, wishing I were anywhere but here. Just when I thought the pitiful event couldn’t get any worse, Frank walked in.
The sight of him smacked me in the heart. He stood in the foyer wearing a dark suit. I went to him as he picked up the pen by the guest book. His hand hovered over the page. Not even a dozen people had scrawled their signatures. No Jeremy. No Gail.
Where were all of my friends?
Oh, that was right. I had no friends.
I’d been the first to marry from our little social group. And by the time my marriage fell apart, all of my former friends had either moved away, taken husbands, or both. I’d tried half-heartedly to reconnect with those still around, but they treated a divorced woman like a fucking leper. I was an outcast. An alien. And then I met this man, Frank, and for a moment I found a bit of shelter from the storm. It hadn’t lasted, though.
In fact, it had ended horribly.
At the little guest podium, he went through the motions of signing his name but the pen wasn’t actually touching the page. I guessed he just did that in case anyone was watching. He peeked around the corner, probably looking at my coffin.
“Please,” I told him. “Go to me. Say goodbye. Make peace.”
His lower lip trembled. His jaw clenched. I wondered if it was from sadness or anger. Without thinking, I reached out and stroked his cheek. Unlike when Shannon touched me earlier, there was no tingling. It was like touching stone.
Beneath his glasses, pink tinged his eyes. He’d been crying. My ghostly heart panged for him—for the hurt etched into his face. He’d had a similar look the last time I’d seen him. He’d put on some weight since then but now he still looked good. Better. He was wearing a wedding ring. I wondered if that meant he’d reconciled with his wife or found a new one.